Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen) is the one of the official languages of Haiti along with French and is spoken by by 8.5 million people in Haiti, which is nearly the entire population. It is also spoken by large Haitian communities in several nearby countries, among them the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Cuba, French Guiana, and the United States. It is based on 18th century French and several West and Central African languages with minor Spanish influence. Much of Hatian Creole grammar is based on French, although it differs greatly from standard French because of the lack of grammatical gender and verb inflection.